Posts Tagged family

As I prepare to pack up the Christmas decorations this morning, I am thinking about all of the years that I have done this task, gone through these identical motions…

I Love having the decor up through the season because it makes the atmosphere seem so festive. From the significance of the twinkle lights (for some reason, impatience and frustration are so much more easily diffused when the lights are twinkling), to the nostalgia of the stockings “hung by the chimney with care”, to the personal significance of our nutcracker collection, which is so precious to my boys. The energy of Love and Light and gratitude fills the air and warms me inside like a cup of hot cocoa.

And then the time comes to un-decorate. It is a labor-intensive process (or at least more so than putting everything up) – removing, re-wrapping, & repacking the individual ornaments; taking down the lights, the wreaths, and the tree; and replacing the furniture that had been displaced by the aforementioned items. Yet this annual ritual has become a tradition in itself, and is inherently comforting.

As I sort through the ornaments I can feel the memories they’ve absorbed over the many years that they have shared our holidays, and the Love inherent in each of them comes flooding back. All four of our babies’ first Christmases. The multitude of their elementary years embodied in handmade chenille-stem miniature wreaths and reindeer which completely make up for in sincerity what they lack in symmetry. Even those ornaments that have survived from my own childhood to grace our tree remind me of the roots of my ideas about what family means. Introspection, inspired by a collection of items that dwell in the garage for eleven months of the year.

The tangible symbols of the warmth and magic of Christmas may be packed up in boxes and stored away, but the air that flows through the newly uncluttered house is fragranced with the delightful aroma of possibility inherent in new beginnings. Free of the weight of the trappings of the holidays, it seems anything is possible.